In the many professions of publishing, women still excel. Undoubtedly the twentieth century was the century of women writers and readers. Even in Italy among the authors of popular success since the first decades of the twentieth century there are not only men, but there was also a large patrol of female writers who knew how to feed, enrich and sometimes inflame the imagination of male and female readers. And in some cases with editorial aftermath that comes directly to the present day, or close to it.
One of these was Carolina Invernizio, a late XNUMXth-early XNUMXth century narrator, on whom the judgment that Gramsci gave in his Prison notebooks: “the honest hen of our popular literature”. On closer inspection, the judgment could also have been there, and the proof is that it is still unanimously reported today.
Umber himselfto Eco, who has studied and appreciated certain forms of popular culture, was not kind to the writer writing:
Carolina Invernizio was very popular in the XNUMXth century and made entire generations of proletarians dream with stories entitled Thethe kiss of a dead woman, The revenge of a madwoman o The accusing corpse. Carolina Invernizio wrote very badly and someone observed that she had had the courage, or the weakness, to introduce into literature the language of the small bureaucracy of the young Italian State (to which she belonged, her husband, director of a military bakery.)
Perhaps they are judgments that fit perfectly, provided that one has the courage to extend them to the present day, albeit with different terms, to many of the narrators who are the most popular, both in bookstores and on screens, given that they have no literary merit much superior to his. But this is another matter, which would take us far.
Una extraordinary creativeness
Carolina Invernizio was a woman of bourgeois origin, with a linear existence, punctuated by the typical stages of her social condition: studies as a teacher, engagement, marriage, a beloved daughter, a normal family with its rituals and habits. A life maybe even flat, without ever a high note or a flick of the wing.
But perhaps it was the ideal humus, and we would say almost indispensable, for his creativity to blossom and take shape, which materialized in over 120 novels, all kissed, more or less, by an excellent reception from the public.
His books followed each other regularly, as if they were the beads of a rosary, with colorful covers and extremely suggestive titles, which prompted readers to run to the bookstore. Just the covers and titlesWithselected with great attention by the writer and her publisher Salani who came to create a specific series for her novels, they constitute a primary ingredient of her success. Just scroll through the first editions of A dead woman's kiss, Buried her alive, The revenge of a madwoman, The crime of the countess, The hand of the dead, The killer's daughter, The little orphan of Collegno, The children of sin, just to name a few, to understand the importance of these choices in Italy in the early twentieth century.
Also il movies "draws" a lei
The novels were never taken into consideration by the great literary critics, with some exceptions, such as that of Gramsci, but for decades they constituted the privileged readings of a large public, especially women. And this happened despite the anathemas of good society, which strongly advised against reading it to girls, or placing it on the index of the Church, which considered those readings sinful.
Some novels were then transposed into cinematographic works, since the silent era, and later, up to the present day, they have constituted material and background for films and television dramas, which have not failed to gather acclaim and applause. Let us recall the film in this regard The kiss, made from his Kiss of a dead woman, released in 1974 with the screenplay by Pupi Avati; or the television drama in five episodes, Italian popular novel, directed by Ugo Gregoretti, whose third episode, aired in December 1975, was inspired by a novel by him and interpreted by Luigi Proietti. Or, finally, the series of Veiled lady, broadcast by RAI uno in 2015, further proof that his stories weren't exactly to be thrown away.
La life
Invernizio was born in Voghera in 1851, into a quiet middle-class family. Her father is a state official and in 1865, when Carolina was 14 years old, she moved to Florence following the movement of the capital from Turin. Here the girl studied and graduated as a teacher, like the three sisters and like many daughters of her social class. At the right age she gets engaged to an army officer and in 1881, perhaps a little late with her times, she gets married. And after five years comes her only daughter, Marcella. A life, as we can see, in which the stops follow each other regularly, in an identical way to those of the good "ladies" of the town.
But in his head there is no lack of black soul, despite the bourgeois appearance always and impeccably exhibited: a transgressive and disruptive soul, rigidly held in check. She is an exemplary wife, a very tender mother, very devoted to the Madonna, to whose Sanctuary of the Consolata in Turin she goes with her daughter every Saturday. On Mondays she receives friends and acquaintances in her living room and in some cases even passing intellectuals: small social and citizen obligations, including premieres at the theatre. Never a transgression, never a gossip about her. The only quirk, if it can be defined as such, that of having postponed the date of birth by 7 years, discovered only recently with an investigation into the registry office. For the rest nothing to say.
The debut youth
She began writing already as a young girl, when she attended master's school, so much so that one of her stories risks getting her expelled from school for the scabrous content. But her real debut takes place in 1877, when she goes in person to the publisher Salani in Florence, with an establishment not far from where she lives, and she offers him her first novel, Rina or the Angel of the Alps. The great popular Florentine publisher was immediately struck by the unexpected proposal to publish a book by a female author, a rare event in the world of letters at the time, and by the grace of the young woman, by the notebooks in which the novel was written in beautiful handwriting.
He reads it and decides to publish it immediately, some say paying him 5 gold napoleons, i.e. five coins of 20 lire each, some without any compensation, some for a compensation that twenty-six-year-old Carolina, who however declares 19, never wanted accept. The bet immediately proved to be a winner, the book sold like hot cakes, the reprints followed one another, the circulation soared, it seems to reach 150.000 copies only in the first few years. Considering that Heart and Pinocchio are yet to come, the novel is an unparalleled success in our asphyxiated publishing landscape, rich in books, but scarce in readers. Then as today.
Una break
At this point it would seem the time to strike while the iron is hot, that is to continue with the subsequent works, with the first one to pave the way. But here Carolina stops, she takes a break; perhaps she is impending marriage with the related preparations, the new home, a family life to set up and channel in the right track from the beginning.
He resumed writing only about ten years later, in the mid-eighties, right around the time of his daughter's birth, which took place in 1886. But from now on there will be no more stops. The return to books occurs with what will become her most successful: A dead woman's kiss, a work that will be reprinted countless times and that will be re-proposed, as we have seen, also in various film and television remakes.
Una production huge
Carolina thus reconnects with Salani, among other things she now lives right across from the publishing house, in Viale dei Mille in Florence, and begins a collaboration that will last thirty years, until her death in 1916, even if the real official contract that binds it exclusively to the publisher will be signed only in 1907.
But this is an unimportant detail, in a continuous and never interrupted relationship, with a regular production of three or four books a year, in some cases, however, expanded up to seven in 1892, eight in 1912 and again to seven in 1915: novels that had sometimes already appeared as an appendix to the newspapers "L' Opinion Nazionale" of Florence and "La gazzetta di Torino".
The success repeats itself from now on with every title. And at this point she is paid regularly: 600 lire per volume. It's not a lot, for the sales it ensures, but it's not a little either: Emilio Salgari in that period takes just over half of it, 350 lire per title. But for her, a lady of good society, her sum is enough: there is the salary of her husband, an officer of the Bersaglieri, to make ends meet. And in any case, by writing more than three a year on average, aren't you going to earn more than your husband? At Christmas then the publisher gives her a beautiful jewel.
In short, she's fine with it, she doesn't try to switch to other publishers, or to get paid as a percentage, which would have guaranteed her stratospheric earnings. She feels satisfied and doesn't think of changing anything. Imagine then going to fussily negotiate the fees with the publisher! The case of Salgari is different and far more dramatic, with a large family and a wife in need of constant care, for whom money is never enough, which will then lead him to suicide.
I because of the success
Why so successful? Probably because his simple and elementary prose is easily accessible to everyone, even the humblest classes. But even the taller ones like it. It is known that Giolitti himself, during the summer holidays in Bardonecchia, never fails to bring along a book by him. And every month a ship sails from the port of Livorno to America crammed with volumes of him, which sometimes remain the only link of emigrants from Buenos Aires or Long Island with their mother country.
Those elements that have made the fortune of the appendix novel and that she knows how to juggle skillfully, crime, guilt, sin, betrayal, hate and love, sometimes tinged with atmospheres bordering on the illicit and eroticism, manage to exert a fascination irresistible. Just as the eternal struggle between good and evil, between vice and virtue, between angelic and diabolical creatures, between depraved seducers and naive girls corresponds to the expectations of the public, stimulates their interest and curiosity. And in this way the reader identifies with the story told.
The writer is often inspired by news stories, the most inextricable criminal episodes; her imagination reworks them and brings them to a conclusion. To make her stories credible, she tries to really represent the places, streets and alleys where the crimes take place. You use road guides, when you cannot go there in person, in order to appear credible and well adherent to reality, as Salgari does with exotic places with the help of atlases and encyclopaedias.
He died of pneumonia in 1916, aged 65. In his will she expressly requested that his burial be postponed for a few days, to avoid that fate of being buried alive that he had so expertly described in the novel of the same name.
